For the runaround, press one…

An excellent treatise on customer service, how it works, and some of the commonest mistakes.

Quotable quote: “Many software companies still think that it’s “economical” to run tech support in Bangalore or the Philippines… the cost of a single incident might be $10 instead of $50, but you’re going to have to pay $10 again and again. Somehow, the phone companies and the cable companies and the ISPs just don’t understand this equation. They outsource their tech support to the cheapest possible provider and end up paying $10 again and again and again fixing the same problem again and again and again… The cheap call centers have no mechanism for getting problems fixed; indeed, they have no incentive to get problems fixed because their income depends on repeat business, and there’s nothing they like better than being able to give the same answer to the same question again and again.”